Many conventional software applications are configured to display thumbnail images (i.e., smaller sized images) in lieu of displaying full-sized images on a display screen. A benefit of rendering a thumbnail image in lieu of rendering a full-sized image is space saving on a display screen. For example, display of a full size image on a display screen may not be appropriate, especially if a user is not particularly interested in viewing the fill-sized image.
Typically, in response to selection of a displayed thumbnail on a display screen, a conventional computer initiates retrieval of data to render a full-sized version of the selected thumbnail. Accordingly, a user can selectively view higher resolution or larger sized images merely by clicking on a thumbnail in a web page, document, etc.
Use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in web pages support a notion of “image sprites” in a read-use case. In general, image sprites have been used to reference multiple different images. In certain conventional cases, a web page may use an image sprite that contains graphical elements of the page. The image sprites enable efficient network transport and referencing of multiple images rather than referencing each image individually.
An image file format called Flashpix was developed to store an original image and corresponding smaller thumbnail data for rendering a thumbnail of the original image.
In contrast to Flashpix, yet another conventional web application includes individually storing an original image as well as individually storing each respective thumbnail image as different retrievable image files.